The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

Literature & Fiction

Larsen, Reif

Contemporary

Vintage

“Big, beautiful, ambitious . . . It takes narrative magic to pull off such a loopy combination, and luckily, Reif Larsen has it to spare. His prose is addictive and enchanting.” —Los Angeles Times The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, the hospital’s electricity fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, everyone present sees a healthy baby boy—with jet-black skin—born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. “A childbirth is an explosion,” an ancient physician explains. “Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn’t it?” A kaleidoscopic novel both heartbreaking and dazzling, Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar rapidly explodes outward from Radar’s strange birth. In World War II Norway, a cadre of imprisoned schoolteachers founds a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of history for decades to come, performing acts of radical art and experimental science in the midst of conflict zones from embattled Bosnia to Khmer Rouge Cambodia and the contemporary Congo. All of these stories are linked by Radar—now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands—who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents, and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend. Drawing on the furthest reaches of quantum physics, forgotten history, and mind-bending art, Larsen’s I Am Radar is a triumph of storytelling at its most primal, elegant, and epic: a breathtaking journey through humanity’s darkest hours, yet one that arrives at a place of shocking wonder and redemption. Praise for I Am Radar: “A deeply patterned narrative that darts easily from small-bore domestic dramas to sweeping historical catastrophes with just the right fillip of silliness and levity to keep the whole text eminently approachable.” —The New York Times Book Review

I Am Radar: A Novel

United States

Penguin??Books

A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal-is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls. T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself. As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery. All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find. T.S.'s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut. Now a major motion picture directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Kyle Catlett and Helena Bonham Carter.

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet: A Novel

Humor & Satire

A boundary-leaping debut tracing a gifted young map maker’s attempt to understand the ways of the world When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T. S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal—if you consider mapping dinner table conversations normal—is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T. S. from his family home just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum’s hallowed halls. There are some answers here on the road from Divide and some new questions, too. How does one map the delicate lessons learned about family or communicate the ebbs and flows of heartbreak, loneliness, and love? Now a major motion picture directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Kyle Catlett and Helena Bonham Carter.

Dramas & Plays

The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet: A Novel (Movie Tie-In)

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversations normal- is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum’s hallowed halls. T.S.’s trip begins at Coppertop Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C. , but his journey’s movement is far harder to track: How does one map the delicate lessons learned about family or communicate the ebbs and flows of heartbreak, loneliness, and love? There are some answers here on the road from Divide, and some new questions, too.

Literary

Penguin Canada

I Am Radar

At the birth of Radar Radmanovic, all of the hospital electricity mysteriously fails. When the lights are turned on again, the staff is startled to see the healthy baby boy--with unusually black skin--born to the two stunned Caucasian parents. Despite the father’s joy at the successful delivery, it is the mother, Charlene, who bears the brunt of the gossip and speculation, and who becomes overwhelmed with her need to ‘fix’ the skin color of her beloved Radar. Though Charlene has her own problems following the birth--including a newly heightened but crippling sense of smell--she receives no help from the hospital staff. “A childbirth is an explosion,” the ancient physician says by way of explanation. “Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn’t it?” Just what was born in the long explosion of the Twentieth Century? In the shrapnel of propaganda and colonialism, genocide and racism, the characters of I Am Radar hunt in the rubble for what life can still be salvaged. Following a secret society of puppeteers and scientists who perform experimental art in the midst of violent conflict, I Am Radar is a triumph of pure storytelling, a testement to the liberating powers of the imagination. In the civil wars of Yugoslavia, two brothers walk shockingly different paths: one into the rapacious paramilitary forces terrorizing the countryside, the other into the world of avant-garde puppetry in beseiged Belgrade. In Norway during the Second World War, a group of resistance schoolteachers defy the German occupiers by stealing radioactive material from a secret Nazi nuclear reactor--to stage a dramatic art performance, with no witnesses, deep in the Arctic circle. In the years before Cambodia’s murderous Khymer Rouge regime, an expatriate French landowner adopts an abandoned native child and creates a life-long scientific experiment of his new son's education in physics. In the modern-day Congo, a disfigured literature professor assembles the world’s largest library--composed of perfect, interlocking hexagons hidden within the jungle--in the futile hope that the books will somehow cement a peace in the war-torn country. And through all these stories walks Radar Radmanovic, a gifted radio operator from the New Jersey Meadowlands--an epileptic with a strange past, an uncanny ability to communicate with machines, and all too ordinary white skin. Written by acclaimed novelist Reif Larsen--the author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, soon to be a major motion picture--I Am Radar displays the same measures of charm and empathy, tragic circumstance and original dialogue for which Larsen’s last work was praised. A sophisticated but addictive reading experience that draws on the farthest reaches of quantum physics, forgotten history, and performance art, I Am Radar is a novel somehow greater than all of its parts, a breath-taking and unparalleled joyride through the worst that humanity has to offer only to arrive at a place of shocking wonder and redemption.

Uma Wimple Charts Her House

Hip, funny, unique--and a perfect curriculum tie-in--here's a picture book with mega kid-appeal about the challenges a student faces when she is given an assignment to make a chart of her own home!\nUma's been making charts since she was a little kid. But when her teacher gives the class Uma's dream assignment--to make a chart of their own homes--she is thrown for a loop. Oh, the possibilities! Oh, the pressure! What makes a house housey? she wonders. In order to figure it out, she asks each member of her family--Mom, Dad, and brothers Rex, Bram, and Lukey. But it's not until she has a meltdown and Lukey comforts her that Uma figures out the secret to her chart--and her family. It's the love that is shared inside a house's walls.\nTold in first-person and featuring engaging graphic artwork, this fun and lively picture book--perfect for classroom use--is a reminder that someone's true home is not a place, but rather the people with whom you surround yourself.\nFrom School Library Journal\nGr 1–3—Third grader Uma's charting habits cover the length of her father's fingers, her height, the number of freckles on her cheeks, the chronicling of her shin scrapes. She loves to make charts, even a chart of her gear for making them: pie charts, bar charts, Venn diagrams, pyramid charts, map charts, or tree charts. Examples of her personal charts include the moon phases and possibilities of werewolves, her personal food pyramid, or a record of the Wimple family's daily screen time. Above all, they are NOT simple doodles, but based upon data. Mixed media art in a subdued palette creates folk-inspired trees in a neighborhood of unique houses and highlights the detail of hand-drawn illustrations with a comic flair. When a class assignment is given to "draw a chart of your home," Uma is overwhelmed with the possibilities and ways to describe it. A variety of fonts emphasizes her scattered thoughts: should she chart brick patterns, or windows, maybe roof angles? She even charts the levels of love in her household and those who make it special. VERDICT What a tumble into a young girl's brain and heart, all calculations and systems. A suggested first purchase for libraries, this title brings creativity—and a bit of math—to an understanding of all of life.—Mary Elam, Learning Media Services, Plano I.S.D., TX

Children's Books

Gibson, Ben

Growing Up & Facts of Life

Anne Schwartz Books

Hip, funny, unique--and a perfect curriculum tie-in--here's a picture book with mega kid-appeal about the challenges a student faces when she is given an assignment to make a chart of her own home! Uma's been making charts since she was a little kid. But when her teacher gives the class Uma's dream assignment--to make a chart of their own homes--she is thrown for a loop. Oh, the possibilities! Oh, the pressure! What makes a house housey? she wonders. In order to figure it out, she asks each member of her family--Mom, Dad, and brothers Rex, Bram, and Lukey. But it's not until she has a meltdown and Lukey comforts her that Uma figures out the secret to her chart--and her family. It's the love that is shared inside a house's walls. Told in first-person and featuring engaging graphic artwork, this fun and lively picture book--perfect for classroom use--is a reminder that someone's true home is not a place, but rather the people with whom you surround yourself. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hamish Hamilton

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Larsen, Reif. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Larsen, Reif

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Larsen, Reif. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

I Am Radar: A Novel

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet: A Novel

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet: A Novel (Movie Tie-In)

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

I Am Radar

Uma Wimple Charts Her House

Uma Wimple Charts Her House

I Am Radar